All Good Days End with Dream Phone (a post by Anna)

When friends visit Houston, we sometimes pretend we are extremely classy. Lee’s pen pal Alix was in town last weekend, so a trip to the Houston Polo Club was in order. We brought out our inner southern belles by suiting up in sun dresses and hats, hoping to give off an air of high society. Based on our last experience at the polo club, we were dressed for success.

Now try to imagine the surprise when, en route, our friend Meredith called to say The Sport of Kings had been canceled due to the prior week’s flooding.

So much for ponies and chukkers and stomping divots.

But when life gives you lemons, make lemonade! Considering our attire, we briefly brainstormed upper-class activities. We are also extremely cheap frugal, so our choice needed to be practically free. Which is why we decided on croquet.

I've heard this is how people go shopping in Dallas.

Once arriving at our humble abode of mismatched furniture hand-me-downs, we made mint juleps and snacks from supplies found living in our fridge.

Lee is a very hands-on helper.

I tried to quickly rectify the porch-chairs-covered-in-pollen situation so that we could leisurely drink from from aged tea cups and reap the benefits of Alix’s impromptu culinary creation, rum cake!

Here we are having a blast.

The afternoon progressed to include a lovely game of croquet in our park. Due to our croquet inexperience, the wickets were arranged in terrible positions that unexpectedly required impossible uphill putting and constant changes in grass texture. If nothing else, this magnified the challenge of the match.

Lee demonstrates perfect form with her mallet.

Acknowledging the fact that the only type of games in which I excel are board games, I trailed behind my opponents who continually made impressive comebacks to lead one another. I spent most of the experience fair-weather-fanning the current leader and tapping my poor little croquet ball far behind the rest.

The Serious Competitors

Unrelated to our upper-class evening theme, we ended the night with a blast from the past. Dream Phone is compulsory to a successful evening.